Displaying items by tag: geosensorial tasting

Summary: 

This wine has high acidity, medium alcohol with medium body, and aromas of lemon, lime, and wet stones. Sound familiar? Wine-tasting notes can appear strikingly similar on paper, especially when tasting a suite of comparable wines. As a taster, how can you differentiate them? Do we learn anything about their terroirs or production methods from this type of tasting note?

WSG’s Tasting Lab® allows you to take your tasting skills to the next level and qualify (and not just quantify) a wine's aromatic expression and structural components. You’ll also dive deeper into the wine's texture and mouthfeel which is often overlooked.

Join Caroline Hermann, MW, to explore this new interactive way of tasting that builds on your existing skills and knowledge. Caroline is one of the Masters of Wine with whom WSG collaborated to create the Advanced Analytical Tasting Grid. Caroline will walk us through this simple method during this live webinar. With a few simple clicks on your computer screen or tablet, the Advanced Analytical Tasting tool leads to a deeper understanding of wine quality.

If you'd like to taste along and try the tool with Caroline, the following two Chablis wines can be pre-purchased in advance. WINES ARE NOT REQUIRED TO JOIN BUT ARE RECOMMENDED!

Wine 1: Chablis Domaine Laroche Saint Pierre 2019

Wine 2: Chablis Patrick Puize Terroir de Courgis 2020

OPTIONS FOR PURCHASING THE WINES

Participants are invited to seek out these wines on Wine Searcher by using the links below and then updating the search with the country in which you are located:

Wine 1: Chablis Domaine Laroche Saint Martin 2019

Wine 2: Chablis Patrick Puize Terroir de Courgis 2020

If you can't find these exact wines: you can purchase an entry-level village Chablis (wine 1) and contrast this with a terroir-driven Chablis (from specific lieu dit or premier cru ideally) from a top wine maker (wine 2).

Lastly, if you do not have the opportunity to source the wines, you can still join in on the webinar and follow along to learn about this exciting new tasting method! 

Presenter: Caroline Hermann MW

Caroline Hermann MW brings a unique perspective to the wine sector with a background in alcohol beverage law, environmental law, sustainability, and international trade. She teaches Wine Scholar Guild and WSET wine and sake courses in Washington DC, with a focus on tasting analysis. She was part of the team to devise the Advanced Analytical Tasting grid. 

Summary: 

Join WSG founder Julien Camus for a live, interactive tutored tasting of two terroir-driven wines from Alsace.

You will also have the chance to discover WSG's brand new Tasting Lab® and initiate yourself to GeoSensorial Tasting using our tactile tasting grid. This grid focuses on a wine’s mouthfeel, texture and shape and how these elements might relate to the wine’s terroir signature.

The following two wines will be tasted during the WSG Live session: 
 
-Domaine Marcel Deiss Grasberg 2016
-Domaine Marcel Deiss Engelgarten 2018

Presenter: Julien Camus

Julien worked as Trade Attaché for wines and spirits at the French Embassy in Washington DC from 2004 to 2006. In this role, he recognized the need for French wine education as a means to spur consumer demand and interest in his country’s wines.

To that end, in 2005 he founded the Wine Scholar Guild, an organization dedicated to the promotion of French wine and culture through education.

After leaving the embassy, he devoted his energies to developing the Wine Scholar Guild and its network of program providers around the globe. Julien holds a Masters's Degree in Business Administration with a major in International Marketing from the Strasbourg Management School.

In 2019, Julien was one of the "Future 50" award winners, an award created by WSET and IWSC to acknowledge professionals under 40 who have made a significant contribution to the industry. Since 2021, Julien has been teaching tasting as part of the University of Strasbourg’s degree in GeoSensorial Tasting.

This article is the first of an upcoming series by French neuroscientist Gabriel Lepousez. Gabriel is part of the Scientific Committee formed by WSG in the context of its "Architecture of Taste Research Project". He has also presented a fascinating segment on "The Neuroscience of Wine Tasting" as part of The Science of Wine Tasting Webinar Series which will resume with new episodes in the Spring of 2022.

The wine tasting paradox

There is a real paradox in the experience of tasting a product like wine. Tasting is such a familiar, instinctive, and seemingly obvious act; something that we take for granted. At the same time, wine is a one of the most complex sensory objects that we put into our mouths.

Indeed, wine is one of the rare sensory objects of our daily life which solicits all at the same time:

On the 6th of September 2021, Wine Scholar Guild hosted the first large-scale blind-tasting panel as part of its recently announced The Architecture of Taste Research Project.

Hosted at the Bristol Hotel in Colmar, Alsace, this panel tasting launched WSG’s research on the tactile and geosensorial tasting approach it developed over the past year.

The tasting was designed specifically to assess the experimental and innovative tasting grid that had been developed as part of the Architecture of Taste Research Project. Its eventual aim is a tactile and geosensorial tasting method which focuses on a wine’s energy, induced salivation, geometry/shape, texture, and consistency.

Such a tasting method would provide students of wine with an enriched and universal lexicon that not only assesses the qualities of a wine but also dives into the nature of a wine’s personality and, perhaps, its corresponding terroir signature. 

The panel of tasters included owners or representatives of twenty top Alsace estates such as Albert Boxler, Weinbach, Marcel Deiss and Albert Mann. They were joined by a dozen wine professionals, including Pascaline Lepeltier MOF, a member of the ATRP Scientific Committee, as well as a dozen serious wine lovers. All in all, over 45 panelists participated in the tasting.

The Wine Scholar Guild (WSG) has initiated an ambitious undertaking aimed at developing a new way to assess wine: the Architecture of Taste Research Project (ATRP)

The Architecture of Taste Research Project aspires to find a way to empower the individual to taste and describe wine with an enriched and universal lexicon that not only dives deeper into assessing the qualities of a wine’s building blocks but also into the nature of a wine’s personality and, where relevant, its corresponding terroir signature.

Just as significantly, the research project aims to develop a new set of assessment criteria that uses the body’s own reflexive reactions as a tuning fork to capture a wine’s inherent signal—a message that incorporates not only sensory perceptions but also perceived energy, the emotions it triggers and evocative elements that, once again, might link a wine to “place.”

Is a wine horizontal or vertical? Square or round? Hollow or dense? Relaxed or tensed? Grainy or smooth? This is a small sample of GeoSensorial Tasting vocabulary — a method that seeks to empower the taster to feel, interpret and give voice to wines of place.

By focusing on mouthfeel and assessment criteria such as energy, salivation, geometry, texture and consistency, this methodology helps you to better understand the nuances that a specific terroir, among other factors, brings to wine and helps you to express those nuances. It puts light on how, for example, Chenin Blanc wines from the schist soils of Savennières, the tuffeau of Saumur and the flint-clay and limestone-clay of Vouvray differ from one another.  Quite an ambitious undertaking!